The Blank Paper

I want you all to consider where I am starting . . . with a blank piece of paper.  Anyone undertaking a creative endeavor begins here, with the slate wiped clean.  A song, a painting, a lecture, a story . . . whatever it is, if it is a creative thing, it starts from nothing on the page.  Well, not nothing, exactly.  For me, it is a whisper of an idea in my imagination.  Usually I can visualize a part of it but it takes a while for the whole thing to take shape.  I sketch and play around with the composition until I get it just the way I want it, and then I am ready to begin the painting.  By this time the idea is fully formed.  Some folks are terrified of the empty whiteness of a blank page.  But for me, I get excited taking out a fresh, new stiff piece of watercolor paper, knowing how much time I'm going to spend hunched over it, transforming it.  I wonder what serendipity will happen.  What will it look like when I'm done?

Sometimes when we look at a finished painting or hear beautiful music or taste an amazing meal or read something profound, we forget that it began as nothing more than a glimmer of an idea.  Somehow the creative mind took that idea and played with it, tested it, tried it this way and that.  Perhaps many previous bad ideas were discarded along the way before this inspiration took hold. And then, by slow degrees, the creative soul executes the idea, word by word, brush stroke by brush stroke, note by note, putting one foot in front of the other, aiming for the far distant finish line.  I think it was Thomas Edison who said genius is one part inspiration and 99 parts perspiration.  He was right.  Sometimes beautiful things seem so perfect, as if they were always here, always just so, and we forget about the creative process that lovingly and patiently coaxed it into its fully formed, complete being. 

For my paintings, I use Arches 300# lb. hot press watercolor paper.   You can't tell anything from this scan, but it is stiff, with a slight 'tooth' and a beautiful feathery deckled edge.  It is a work of art just as it is!  And so with my first pencil mark, this empty paper with endless possibilities will be limited to just one, and a journey begins.